April 8 2005

Microsoft is going head-to-head
with another software giant: IBM (IBM ). Big Blue's Lotus Notes software
pioneered the collaboration market and now has 118 million users. Last
year, IBM began rolling out a new package of applications, called Workplace,
that combines collaboration capabilities with the programs workers use
to do their jobs every day. Says Steven A. Mills, IBM's executive vice-president
for software: "Our game plan here is to be a major player in this
next generation."

A decent overview of the market
battle in the collaboration space today. Nice to see Mills and Gates
duking it out -- I think Gates seems to have missed the fundamental premise
of IBM Workplace:

While customers are kicking the tires,
Microsoft and IBM are kicking each other. Gates dismisses IBM as a serious
competitor since so many of its desktop programs, such as the Lotus 1-2-3
spreadsheet, are afterthoughts in today's market. "It's hard for a
company that has been out of it for so long and had the various failures
they've had to wake up and say, 'We care about information workers."'
he says. To Mills, it is Microsoft that is stuck in the past. "Their
world is the world of e-mail, not the world of collaboration," he
says. Their verbal salvos don't mean much, but as long as they back their
talk with innovative new products, customers such as Starkey Labs and San
Francisco State will be the real winners.

Business Week
still hasn't posted the Q&A interviews with Bill Gates and Steve Mills
that are meant to accompany this story...I'll blog that separately when
I can get the URLs.
Link: BusinessWeek:
Combat Over Collaboration
> (Free registration required)